I\u2019ve heard some sports fans claim there\u2019s nothing good to watch during the Winter Olympics.\u00a0 They say the flash and pizzazz of the summer games is absent in the winter games.<\/p>\n
I beg to differ.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been a Winter Olympics fan since Picabo Street was popular.\u00a0 Even so, summer fans have a point.\u00a0 With games like cross-country skiing, curling and figure skating, where can a sports fan find some good old-fashioned Olympic excitement?\u00a0 I believe excitement can be found in the sports below.<\/p>\n
5. Hockey<\/strong><\/p>\n Let\u2019s face it.\u00a0 Hockey has a reputation as a sport where a fight can erupt at any moment.\u00a0 Though Olympic rules penalize fighting with a match penalty (\u201cgame misconduct plus automatic suspension from next game\u201d) or a 10-minute misconduct penalty, body contact is still allowed during game play.\u00a0 You can bet that players will get as close to each other as they can without incurring the wrath of the referee.\u00a0 Add a smaller rink and a crowd of frenzied fans and you have a sport full of anticipation and excitement.<\/p>\n 4. Luge<\/strong><\/p>\n Luge may seem to be little more than an athlete racing a sled down an icy water slide, but it is actually known as the fastest sport on ice.\u00a0 Lugers race a 300 ft. drop in excess of 95 mph, according to usaluge.org.\u00a0 Athletes go so fast that it\u2019s the only sport measured to a thousandth of a second.\u00a0 This is a sport that if you blink, you might miss it.<\/p>\n 3. Skeleton<\/strong><\/p>\n The skeleton competition is very similar to the luge competition with one big difference: the racer speeds down the track head first facing the ground.\u00a0 Though slower than the luge race, competitors still race downhill at nearly 80 mph.\u00a0 The only people I know who would do that are either daredevils or crazy.\u00a0 Watching people do it for sport should be a good time.<\/p>\n 2. Freestyle skiing<\/strong><\/p>\n The freestyle ski is intense enough to be included in the X-Games.\u00a0 It\u2019s divided into three events: moguls, in which a skier travels through intentionally bumpy snow and performs two trick jumps, ski cross, where four skiers racing down a track at the same time and aerials, or high-flying trick jumps.\u00a0 Whether you enjoy a race competition or want to see an athlete catch some major air-time flipping and spinning, there\u2019s something here for you.<\/p>\n 1. Snowboarding<\/strong><\/p>\n This event has it all.\u00a0 Trick jumps.\u00a0 Halfpipes.\u00a0 Superstars.\u00a0 Like the freestyle ski, the sport is divided into three events: snowboard cross, or multiple snowboarders racing down the track at once, the parallel giant slalom, or two competitors racing around flags and my favorite, the halfpipe, snowboarding\u2019s version of the skateboarding favorite.\u00a0 Adding to this year\u2019s excitement is Shaun White\u2019s new halfpipe trick, the double McTwist 1260.\u00a0 He says he\u2019s the only one in the world who can do it, and the Winter Olympics is the perfect place to defend that claim.<\/p>\n It may not be as popular or well-known as the Summer Olympics, but there\u2019s something for everyone to enjoy at this year\u2019s Winter Olympics.\u00a0 The Olympics start on Feb. 12 on NBC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019ve heard some sports fans claim there\u2019s nothing good to watch during the Winter Olympics.\u00a0 They say the flash and pizzazz of the summer games is absent in the winter games. I beg to differ.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been a Winter Olympics fan since Picabo Street was popular.\u00a0 Even so, summer fans have a point.\u00a0 With games […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[949,1976,948,951,950,1383,947],"class_list":["post-4019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news","tag-hockey","tag-meagan-ewton","tag-olympics","tag-shaun-white","tag-snowboarding","tag-sports","tag-winter-olympics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-12P","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4019"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4068,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4019\/revisions\/4068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}